The Inception of PlaceWar

The battle has been raging on forever and has taken its toll on your soldiers. Your army’s supply is running low and you think to yourself, surely the enemy has run out of ammunition. Both armies have been bombarding each other’s position for several hours, then suddenly dead silence.

You send out a reconnaissance team to monitor the current state of your enemy but before they reach their target you see a flash of light punching through the thin fog that has enveloped the terrain. Then an all-too-familiar sound echoed through the field which was followed immediately by a much louder sound — BOOM!

Moments later, you found yourself on the ground with a junior officer trying to help you up. You can’t understand what he is trying to say, there is still a strong ringing sound in your ear. Commander Myrtle are you alright!? Slowly you regained your bearing and realized what had just happened.

An enemy tank just fired in your direction hitting the tank in front of you instantly destroying it. The shockwave threw you to the ground from your post. Dazed but unfazed you immediately ordered your troops to return fire. Your last tank fires all its remaining ammunition, hoping for a miracle of a direct hit.

GG! You can hear someone telling you over at discord in a defeated tone. It was the commander of the opposing team. You smiled and answered “you almost had me there! Care for another round?” to which he replied “much obliged” with a giddy grin. “Time to bring out the big guns” you whispered while whipping out your strongest and biggest NFT Tank team from your inventory. Let’s rock!

Gaming’s Intrinsic Value

Gaming has become the most dominant sector in the entertainment industry. In fact, it is so huge that it is even bigger than the film and music industries combined! There is no sign of it slowing down as pundits believe it will continue to grow well into the future with the advent of new technologies that makes them more compelling, thrilling, enjoyable, realistic, and rewarding for players.

Unbeknownst to some Ms. Myrtle Anne Ramos the CEO of Block Tides and Co-Founder of PlaceWar is an avid gamer. “Gaming is a perfect escape from a world filled with hectic schedules, stress, and responsibilities.” It is a much more fun way of relaxing and flexing one’s imagination. It brings us to “a place where true freedom exists and provides a temporary escape from the burdens of life.”

For Myrtle Anne, it brings back fond memories of childhood when we can basically do or be whatever we want without having to worry about real-life problems. A virtual world where for a fleeting moment we can “lose ourselves”, create an alternate reality, and emancipate ourselves from the restrictions of social norms.

She adds that gaming is an effective venue to socialize and communicate. The persona players project in games is oftentimes a more accurate representation of their true nature, uninhibited and unrestrained. Games create virtual worlds where groups and communities can spawn organically and eventually emerge into the “real world.”

The COVID-19 pandemic further accelerated the growth of the gaming industry. It became a valuable lifeline for people who were seeking entertainment while remaining connected to their family and friends. It was a refuge from total isolation that might be detrimental to one’s mental health.

During the height of the pandemic, a new type of gaming experience was rapidly taking shape. This development came at no better time when the world seemed to be closing its doors to every type of physical human interaction. This allows gaming to expand its intrinsic value beyond entertainment, communication, and social interaction. The Play-to-Earn evolution has begun.

Play-to-Earn

Play-To-Earn (P2E) games allow players to earn rewards that have real-world value by competing with other players, completing various tasks, or by simply progressing through the game. Rewards came in various forms such as cryptocurrencies, in-game digital assets, NFT skins, and avatars which can be converted into real cash through the various available exchanges.

P2E (as well as its other variant: Play-and Earn, Create-and-Earn, Move-and-Earn, and others) was made possible through the integration of an irreversible and immutable decentralized value network commonly called blockchain via smart contracts (self-executing code). This allowed developers to create digital assets that they don’t solely control: NFTs and digital tokens.

Blockchain paved the way for true game asset ownership empowering gamers to exchange not only conversations or information but digital items of value. The same technology is paving the way for the next iteration of the internet WEB3.0 alongside Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, 5G, and the Semantic Web.

P2E Scholarships

According to Myrtle Anne, the prolonged pandemic presented a unique opportunity to explore emerging technologies to mitigate its lingering effects. Her unwavering belief in blockchain technology and passion for gaming led her to organize one of the first scholarship programs in the Philippines for Play-to-Earn games.

The scholarship is a popular term used in the blockchain gaming community to describe the process of lending out NFT to newcomers. It is an effective and less risky path for newbies to experience a blockchain-based game before making a purchase. Lenders called managers to share the rewards generated by the scholar’s gaming activity.

Depending on market conditions, earnings from scholarships sometimes surpass minimum wages in certain countries. There was a time when scholars earned several times higher than the daily average income in the Philippines. Scholarships were so lucrative that several mainstream broadcasting outlets around the world featured P2E’s live-changing phenomenon.

Myrtle Anne also reveals Scholarship programs address two major roadblocks when considering playing blockchain-enhanced games: Its huge outright cost and blockchain’s steep learning curve. Most of these games require would-be players to buy NFTs that may cost several hundred or even thousands of dollars before they could start.

Those who are able to afford this high cost are also confronted with the task of navigating the often convoluted process of buying NFTs. Due to the decentralized nature of blockchain transactions users that are not familiar with it are at risk of losing their money.

Challenges of leading the P2E Game

Despite P2E’s success, there were some major design flaws in the leading Play-to-Earn game, laments Myrtle Anne. It lacks gameplay options. After a while, it became too repetitive and monotonous alienating gamers and leaving an impression that the scholarship was more of a job rather than a game.

It does not have any social interaction mechanism built into the game. All human interaction within the game only revolves around battling each other. One might argue that guilds and social interactions can occur outside the gaming platform, but these alliances do not contribute to the gaming dynamics. Case in point, the same guild members end up battling each other.

It also lacks infrastructure choice limiting users to use one blockchain infrastructure that may not have the best user experience or NFT marketplace. Due to this limitation, managers will have to contend with slower transaction times and high gas fees. This ultimately cuts into the earning potential of many scholars.

Finally, the leading P2E game at the time has an incomplete in-game economy. It has no good stimulus for spending the tokens awarded to players aside from breeding game characters’ NFTs. However, more NFT characters equate to more gamers minting tokens thus accelerating inflation. This triggered the slow decline of its rewards, disappointing scholars and managers alike.

This realization inspired the young executive to spearhead the development of a new blockchain-based game that draws from all the strengths of previous-generation P2E games while at the same time addressing its weaknesses. This marks the start of PlaceWar, a new P2E game that seeks to develop a more sustainable and enjoyable game that everyone can enjoy in years to come.

PlaceWar

PlaceWar is a multi-chain decentralized strategic play-to-earn social game metaverse. She envisions PlaceWar evolving into a sustainable gamified open internet culture metaverse rewarding gaming, community participation, and creativity. At the same time, it seeks to address the design flaws of current P2E games which effectively alienated itself from the traditional gaming community.

The PlaceWar development team plans to diversify the game’s P2E mechanism to cater to a wider gaming audience and keep them engaged. Players will earn rewards by participating in the three different battle modes in the game. In addition, they can participate in the Placedonia Pixel system which features other forms of P2E mechanisms.

The game will also allow user-generated content (UGC) to be incorporated into the game through a shared governance model. Gamers, creatives, and other community members will have the chance to earn their suggestions by proposing designs, parameters, changes, initiatives, and other proposals to the PlaceWar decentralized governance body.

Lastly, the developers plan to bind UGC with its core gameplay features to boost social interaction and to further enhance P2E dynamics. The game was designed to have a social DNA where its entire gaming community can participate in the development direction of the game.

Battle Gameplay

The battle gameplay of PlaceWar is inspired by classical turn-based artillery games such as Worms and Gunbound. The game was simple enough for new and casual players but challenging enough for core gamers to enjoy with all its customization features and strategic gameplay. There are three battle modes in PlaceWar: PVE Skirmish, PVP Battlefront, and Guild War.

Battle Modes

PVE Skirmish mode pits the players against bosses called Pegatron, a three-tank squad controlled by the computer. To win, players should destroy all the tanks of the Pegatron before they lose all their tanks. Triumphant players are rewarded with a $GEAR, consumables, Tech NFTs, and Equipment NFTs. which they can use to upgrade their mechs or sell in an NFT marketplace.

In PVP Battlefront mode players are randomly matched with other players in a 3 vs 3 tank battle. Players are allowed to use game items to augment their tank’s offensive and defensive power or weaken the enemy’s capabilities. The player that first destroys all 3 tanks of their opponent wins the battle. Winners will receive NFT Loots and digital utility tokens.

Guild War is a 10 vs 10 PVP battle arena. It follows the same battle mechanics as the other battle mode but instead of 3 vs 3, each opposing side will have 10 tanks. Participants will only control 1 tank which means there will be a total of 20 players during this mode. To enter, players must wager their $PLACE or $GEAR; Winners will share the deposit of the losing team minus a small area fee to the PlaceDAO.

Placedonia Map Pixel System

PlaceWar features a 300x300 pixel land open canvas world called Placedonia where players can own, create, and battle. Players are rewarded for conquering territory on the map. They can build alliances or declare wars for more territory and create pixel images based on the internet culture they want to project. This is inspired by r/place, a gamified collaborative social experiment on Reddit where Reddit users can edit the color of a single pixel for 5 to 20 minutes at a time.

Each Pixel represents one ownable NFT and is the smallest unit on the map. The owner of the map may change its color, construct structures, and harvest resources that randomly spawn over time. They can also choose to initiate a Pegatron Skirmish to defeat roving rogue drones for loot treasures and other rewards. Players may also participate in conquest mode to conquer other pixels, force them to change colors, and steal their resources.

PlaceDAO

PlaceDAO is the decentralized governing body in PlaceWar. It empowers members of the PlaceWar gaming community to participate in the game’s development. It also serves as a venue where members can collaborate, make alliances or declare wars. Community members can initiate proposals and vote on them through a quadratic voting process.

This governance body also manages the PlaceDAO treasury. This treasury is injected with a portion of the $PLACE tokens supplied from the Ecosystem Fund and Play-to-earn program. It will be subject to PlaceDAO voting procedures that will determine various aspects of the game events and token economics such as the selection of winners of creator rewards every season, adoption of new user-generated tank designs, and Punter room limits among other things.

PlaceWar Scholarship Programs

To accelerate the onboarding process of new players, the PlaceWar team is continuously partnering with game guilds and game organizations to offer scholarship programs. This will help attract new gamers into the GameFi space, especially those who are reluctant to invest a significant amount of money in the industry.

Myrtle Anne Ramos believes that scholarships are golden opportunities to educate people about blockchains and cryptocurrencies. “It is an effective tool to demonstrate what crypto and blockchain are all about.” It is also a great starting point for those who want to explore what the industry has to offer without exposing themselves to risk.

The Reception of PlaceWar

PlaceWar’s oversubscribed private funding round of $1.8 million from industry-leading venture capitalists and investment firms is a solid testament to its potential of being one of the leading projects in the GameFi space. It also strengthens the viability of P2E games as an alternative source of income that is mutually beneficial for NFT owners, scholar gamers, and game developers.

NFT owners will not only be able to experience a highly enjoyable and engaging game but also partake in the rewards distribution of Placewar’s game economy. Non-NFT owner gamers (Scholars) can join scholarship programs to earn extra income doing an activity they enjoy. Developers will benefit from the community’s creative spirit and social interactions, allowing them to develop the game in the exact direction the community likes.

The reaction of the blockchain gaming community is no less stellar. Still, in its development stage, it has already gained over 52,0000 community members, a feat that the pioneer P2E game was only able to achieve after three years of existence.

PlaceWar’s Official Social Media Handles: https://linktr.ee/placewar